#13 The Shades Of Alabaster – YA

Fifteen-year-old Rhona Gustave is a fair-skin, and as far as the rest of Leotia’s concerned, she doesn’t belong in their dark-skinned society, so when her mother’s kidnap drives her across the border into Eastonia—a fair-skinned society at war with Leotia—Rhona’s already shaky loyalties to her homeland are put to the test.

Leotia and Eastonia have been at war long enough to forget why they started fighting in the first place, and both monarchies are in a state of crisis; for the first time neither has a ruling monarch. Rhona soon learns she has strong ties to both opposing royal families, but it took her mother’s arrest by Eastonian mercenaries for her to find out. To save her mother from an unfair execution, Rhona leaves her country behind and joins forces with Atticus—a sixteen-year-old Eastonian with a will for adventure and a mission of his own. Together they must go up against the most powerful man in all of Eastonia; Regent Pierce Gar Dovian.

From Casa d’Alabaster—home of the Eastonian royal family—to the infamous Eastonian prison to the Shadelands—the spirit realm between the living and the dead—Rhona devises ways to sabotage her mother’s execution while also battling her feelings for the increasingly unpredictable Atticus.

THE SHADES OF ALABASTER, complete at 103k, explores three very different perspectives, including the antagonists, and has the potential for crossover appeal.